That was me for a number of years! Then I got a car. 🫠

$40k sounds way too low. Are you buying 20% of a house or not? What happens when you sell? What happens if the house burns down and the insurance company writes a giant check?

I dunno. I remember someone promoting Sterling (and Texas) here - it was quite a bit like a promo campaign. I hope its not one of those things.

As far as I know, there was a recent post in this subreddit involving availability in a co-op; I think this has sparked interest in why co-op housing is useful and its pros and cons.

For me its either them or RCN, but RCN is not available in Cambridge afaik

Their stock price has dropped 99.9% over the past year and is basically a penny stock now...it basically went from $10 to not even a cent in under a year.

Been using starry for 3+ years. I was using their $50 plan which on special went down to $25 over the summer. The lag got so bad recently that I had to upgrade to their $65 plan, no issues so far and no speed issues.

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It may be worth trying 350 again. Once you sign up for updates, you should be able to just join the zoom for your node’s monthly meeting, so you wouldn’t have to go through a recruiter. And in the meetings they’ll talk about overall agendas, events, as well as stuff like calling reps.

You’re in the clear. You comment and post a lot here, so clearly not an interloper.

I agree!

I used RCN while I was in Waltham and I think Starry beats it in terms of quality/price. And both Verizon and Comcast seem horrible in comparison to both.

I'm a customer still and see no reason not to trust them. My alternative is Comcast and they're infinitely worse.

This is a fantastic model for housing in this area, and I wish there were more of them around.

Yes, though for a condo building you would need all of the units to vote go co-op as you're basically tearing up the existing deed and creating a new one.

I think for me its mostly the price (15 bucks a month, which is laughably low). Also had no complaints about the service so far, but chances are it will get worse down the road.

I make 40k a year (so well under the limit) (and have never had a higher paying job) and have 70k of savings in the bank. I put away about $10k a year. I'm sure there are other folks like me who live frugally on low salaries and can therefore afford to pay using accumulated savings.

They will probably get gobbled up by a cell phone company. I don’t see the point of their service when you can get the same thing with more perks from T-Mobile or Verizon home internet.

Gotcha and thank you! Can any property be made into a coop?

Gotcha - I had that feeling also.

The city has some good information about them here:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/housing/forhomebuyers/coops

Fundamentally, the difference is that if you buy a condo, you're buying a specific unit and it's yours. With a co-op, you don't technically own your unit; you own a % of the co-op which owns the building and you also have the right to live in the unit. This gives the co-op board more control.

One reason why they're not very popular in Massachusetts is that they can be harder to get mortgages for. It also can be harder to sell your unit because the co-op board often has to approve any buyer before the sale goes through.

You don't have to be poor. You can have savings. You just need to be under the income threshold. It could be a family where both parents used to work and then they went down to 1 income, a divorced parent with kids, etc.

There are assistance programs that could cover that with a zero percent assistance loan.

I believe that OP is passing this information along and isn’t actually part of the sale. Therefore, this doesn’t count as a self promotion. Although not required, when sharing listings like this in the future, I’d advise making a text post and putting the link there.